Marketing During a Pandemic

by | Apr 20, 2020 | Marketing | 0 comments

Marketing During a PAndemic

One of the great American business stories came from a time of widespread uncertainty like we are facing right now. During the Great Depression, Kellog’s, the famous cereal company, doubled their marketing efforts despite the grave financial situation they found themselves in. Most companies at the time were drastically shrinking their marketing budgets to stay afloat, but Kellog’s took the risk to be different and stand out. This strategic move propelled them to record profit increases and positioned themselves at the top of the pre-packaged cereal world where they remain today.

There is no doubt, we are in uncharted territory and in the thick of something that will forever be talked about in history books with today’s pandemic. The reach of the COVID-19 touches every corner of the Earth, and no industry has been spared from its impact, however, now is the time to adjust your messaging to position the company as the go-to tree service in your community.

Here are 3 tips for marketing your business during the COVID-19 pandemic:

Update Customers and Prospects on Your Change in Operations: Share with customers and potential customers that you are still open for business and how you are taking all of the necessary precautions to ensure their safety, as well as the safety of your employees. Email everyone directly, as well as making this message known across your social media platforms and on your website. Inform your current customers how you will be handling proposals and customer contacts going forward. Communicate these safety precautions across other platforms such as Google My Business, Yelp, Angie’s List, etc.

PRO TIP: Making sure your team is sharing the same messaging regarding your updated policies and procedures is essential. Appoint a communications director to relay your message to your crew to ensure they are on the same page. Have this communications director relay exact images and text to be shared.

Don’t Forget Your Social Media: With all that is happening in the world right now, it is understandable if social media is not your company’s top priority. While it may be easy to push it off to the side, remain consistent with your posts. If you have scheduled content for social media, take time to re-evaluate and create content that is relevant to the situation. Make this content easily shareable so your message can be spread. Be aware of heightened emotions and consider the images and language you are using. For example, be cautious when posting photos with large groups and other acts that defy the current regulations. If you are sharing a photo from the past that does display this, such as from a conference you attended or a kid’s climb, make it known in your caption. Remember, if you are sharing any information relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, ensure all of your sources are credible. The last thing you want to do during this time is spread misinformation.

Here are 5 quick and easy posts you can share on your social media accounts.
a. Share how your company is adjusting its policies and procedures as discussed earlier in the article.
b. Take a photo of the essential service your team is providing during this time
c. Highlight a team member with a short video! Introduce them, ask their role at the company and touch on some of the reasons why they became an arborist.
d. Provide quick video updates of behind the scenes fun, creative things that your business and team are doing in quarantine.
e. Keep it light and share the good things happening this month. Good examples of this include Earth Day and Arbor Day.

In this together – Focus on Your Community: The impact the pandemic has is taking tolls on the pillars of our communities. Make a strong effort to help your local restaurants, charitable foundations and other small businesses within your community. Consider hosting a giveaway on social media by teaming up with a local restaurant and purchasing gift cards for the winners. Grabbing take-out from your favorite local restaurant? Highlight them by sharing on your social media platforms. Reach out to the small businesses in your area, what are their immediate concerns and how can your company alleviate some of those fears? Food banks and other local charities are in desperate need of our support. Now more than ever is a great time to make a charitable donation or host a food drive for your local food bank or Feeding America (Of course, make sure that you comply with your current regulations if hosting a food drive). The demand for blood donors is also at an all time high. If you are in a situation where you are able to make a blood donation, check The Red Cross for local blood drives to donate.

Now is not the time to cut back on your marketing efforts. If people do not know that you are still open to do business, will they be calling you for tree work that they need? Of course not. Be like Kellog’s and get creative with more marketing during this time.

If you want specific help with marketing ideas for your company, reach out to an ArboRisk team member today. Together, we can get through this!

Written by: Amanda Eicher

3 Simple Social Media Metrics

by | Jan 6, 2020 | Marketing | 0 comments

3 Simple Social Media Metrics

You’ve done it. You’re there. You’ve created accounts for your business on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and have begun cultivating relationships with your followers on each. You feel good – this is what all the experts talk about right? Create accounts, show up, engage with your followers, and you’ll get business from it.

But what happens when your engagement drops off? Or your page likes plateau and suddenly you are staring at the same amount of followers each week? What went wrong?

You are not alone. Many business owners make the mistake of assuming that simply have the social media channel will be good enough. However, the human attention span is fickle, and the demand to ensure content is always changing and dynamic is always there.

The good news is, there are ways to adjust and improve upon your social media accounts to ensure that this does not happen to you. Finding ways to measure your social media metrics will allow you to see what works, what doesn’t work, what completely missed the mark, and what is helping your social media presence grow and thrive.

Check out the measuring metrics below to get started enhancing your social media today!

Track Your Post Likes
On average, how many likes do you get on any given post? Regardless of what the number is, start paying attention to which posts receive more likes and which receive less. Craft your content calendar around which posts seem to do better and focus on those posts for the upcoming month. Your strategy should always include posts that you hope will perform well, too! The more diverse content you can utilize, the more you will be able to tell what your audience strongly reacts too and what falls flat for them.

In my experience, posts that contain employees or celebrate an accomplishment always perform better than technical tree care related posts. Be sure to throw in some humor too – no one wants to look at a feed that is only “This is us. This is us working. This is a service we offer.” When accounts become too robotic, people tend to lose interest.

Measure Your Engagement
Begin by observing what an average month of engagement is like on your account. Track how many comments you receive on each post. At the end of the month, compile your data and discuss what worked and what did not. For the next month, create your posts around the content that did work. Tweak the photos you use or the words you include to see if that makes a difference. And, most importantly, set a goal for your business for the month. Maybe you want to try to have at least one comment on each post; or maybe you want to get to 15 comments total for the month. Whatever it may be, focus your posts on this goal and work towards crafting engagement with your followers.

Review Your Follower Count
Start with your baseline of follower count and then set a goal for the upcoming month of how many more followers you’d like to attract. Brainstorm ideas that will attract more followers. Boosted posts or sponsored ads are a great place to start for attracting more likes. There are specific options you can use to target people specifically for page likes. Use your other social media accounts to attract followers to each of your accounts. If you have a great following on Instagram, but a so-so following on Facebook, post on Instagram letting people know that they can also follow you on Facebook. However, if you do this, make sure you give them a reason to follow you on both platforms – people want to see different content; if you are posting the same things on both, this tactic may not be successful because you are not giving them a reason to follow you on both platforms. Inviting your own friends, or asking an employee to invite their friends, has also proven successful for some businesses (although this is more of a quick fix than a long-term solution). At the end of the month, see which tactic worked best for your business and discuss duplication or changes you could make to enhance the strategy.

To grow your social media presence, it is very important to keep metrics in mind and measure them to gain a better understanding of what types of posts your audience is looking for. The more you take the time to observe what is happening on your account, the better you will understand what works and what does not. Ultimately, the more you pay attention to these measurements, the more your social media presence will thrive.

For help creating a social media strategy, contact the ArboRisk team today!

Written by: Katie Petersen

ArboRisk Year in Review

by | Dec 23, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

ArboRisk Year in Review

Wow! What a year for ArboRisk! Thank you to everyone who has made 2019 such a success! From all of our current clients, weekly tip subscribers, internal team members and industry partners, I truly appreciate everything that has been done to help the tree care industry this past year!

Because this is the last weekly tip of the year, I found it only fitting to end by recapping some of the highlights and my favorite moments of 2019.

On the business side of things, ArboRisk saw tremendous growth this past year. We added five extraordinary consultants to the Thrive team starting with Jim Skiera and Katie Petersen in January, followed by Peggy Drescher, Margaret Spencer and Dawn Thierbach in September. Their knowledge and industry experience are unmatched in the tree care and has made such a huge impact on the entire ArboRisk program that we are expanding our services even more. Look for a revised menu of services coming in the beginning of 2020!

Being an active participant in the tree care industry is one of our guiding principles here at ArboRisk and this past year we did just that. Overall, our team attended 13 tree care conferences and gave 10 presentations at those events all across the country. We are officially licensed in 25 states with plans to add a few more in early part of next year and now insure over 250 tree care companies!

While being successful at the office is nice, more importantly the ArboRisk team had a fantastic year personally. 2019 brought four wedding celebrations to our team, with Eric & Katie starting off the ArboRisk wedding season in August, followed by Dawn’s daughter in October, Amanda and her husband, Chris, in November and Ryan and his wife, Jill, in December. Malcolm became the first insurance agent in Wisconsin to earn his CTSP designation! Jim and his wife Colleen moved out to Colorado to be closer to their grandkids. Peggy started her own consulting company and is helping even more arborists get home safe each night. Margaret continues to live her personal passion by teaching first aid and CPR to tree care companies.

As you can see, 2019 was an amazing year here at ArboRisk! Again, I deeply appreciate everyone’s contribution to this wonderful year and look forward with so much excitement and optimism about the coming New Year.

I wish you the very best Happy New Year and an incredible start to 2020!!

Written by: Eric Petersen

How to Get Your Tree Service Found on Google

by | Sep 10, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

How to Get Your Tree Service Found On Google

I often find myself questioning how people knew where to eat or the answer to obscure questions before Google was created. Google has simplified the lives of individuals in more ways than one, but if you were to ask a digital marketer what they think about the platform, their answer might shock you.

In today’s digital marketing world, Google is king, and conquering it is no easy task. With ever changing algorithms, showing up is not a one and done project that can be finished in an afternoon. Tackling your search appearance is a process that takes time and specific knowledge.

So, how do you get your tree service to show up when a prospective customer is searching? Here are three steps to help your business be found on Google:

Tell Google your website exists: Did you know Google has a host of free marketing programs that help with your search appearance? One of them being Google Search Console. This program gives you detailed information to help optimize your website to ensure that you are showing up. Before you can gather and analyze that information, you need to say “hey Google, my business has a website”. Without submitting your website, the elusive Google Search bots would eventually crawl there, but by giving Google a heads up that your site exists, it speeds up the process dramatically. To do this, send a site map over on Google Search Console. If you’re like many, you’re probably sitting thinking, “What in the world is a site map?. Head over to this blog here to learn how to pull a site-map from your website and submit for indexing.

Discover what keywords you want for your business: Picture your ideal client surfing the web for a tree care company, what services do you want your business to show up for when searched? The 3-5 word phrase that came to mind is a keyword. Good keywords are vital because there’s a correspondence between what words are being typed in the search field and the words you’ve written on your website. So being an insurance agency for the tree care industry, we want to be seen when tree services are in the market for insurance. The keywords we incorporate into our website are, “tree service insurance”. Based on these keywords we create specific content around that phrase so we are likely to appear when that is searched.

PRO TIP 1: Do a search in an incognito Google Chrome browser with your desired keyword and see what type of content is coming up. Google evaluates a website’s content and displays what they believe is related to that search. This way, you can add content to your website based on what Google believe is relevant to your desired keywords.

Rule the local search: If you run a tree service in Southeastern Wisconsin, you don’t want to show up on Google when someone is searching for a tree service in Washington state. The answer to this is local search. Most people take to Google when searching for local businesses, instead of driving through their hometown. In order to ensure your website is being found in your desired location, you have to prove that you are local. Google My Business is an online directory of local businesses. This allows you to be found in your local area more easily because it’s just another hint to Google that your business is relevant to what users are searching. To get started, claim your business on Google My Business and create your profile. List all relevant business information such as address, website and contact information.

PRO TIP 2: Create a review generation campaign for customers to leave reviews on your Google My Business profile. This helps further solidify the legitimacy of your business in Google’s eyes. Added bonus if they include the type of job that was done and in what geographical area.

The key to being found on Google is to be on Google! By utilizing the marketing platforms they’ve created, you can analyze and submit data to help improve your search rank. Becoming the #1 business on Google doesn’t happen overnight, but using these three steps can help your business begin to show up more!

Written by: Amanda Eicher

Four Free Powerful Marketing Tools

by | Jul 30, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

Four free Powerful Marketing Tools

Need help marketing your business but are overwhelmed by the abundance of tools and programs available? Me too! With so many options, it’s hard to narrow down which programs are useful and which just aren’t worth the investment. Often times you can stumble across a new program that promises the world and shiny solutions to solve all of your problems, however they may include a contract and hefty price tag. Simply signing up for one of these programs gives me anxiety in case they don’t live up to their hype.

But I’m here to give you hope! As the digital marketing specialist at ArboRisk, I’ve tested out numerous marketing programs and tools, some of which have been a major success for us, and others fell short.

Below are four key marketing tools that are inexpensive or FREE that I utilize daily and that have helped take our marketing to the next level:

Canva: Canva allows you to effortlessly create stunning visual images to use across your social channels or create professional high quality flyers for your next direct mail campaign. Its’ drag and drop features are so easy to use allowing high quality graphics to be created in minutes without the help of an experienced graphic designer. There are free and upgraded versions of Canva giving you access to additional templates and stock photos. If you’re doing a lot of image creation, the upgraded plan is a great route at only $9.95/month per user.

Google My Business Platform: Google is king in today’s digital marketing world. They offer an expansive free marketing platform that helps you promote your business, analyze search ranking, and ensure your website is showing up online. Google Analytics provides detailed data regarding the number of visitors to your site based on a specific date period, the keywords that were used to find your site, how long each user stays there, and more. Understanding your website’s metrics is vital to measuring the success of your marketing efforts. Google’s Search Console allows you to identify any problems your website may have and optimize it for searches. Combined, these tools help you decide what content you need to add to your website to get your targeted audience there.

MailChimp: Regardless of the size of your business, email marketing should be included in your overall marketing strategy. MailChimp is an easy to use email software that remains free until you exceed 2,000 contacts. The platform makes scheduling email blasts, creating automated campaigns, and analyzing data simple even if you are just starting out with email marketing.
Slack: Easy communication between team members is key to successful projects and jobs. Slack is an online chat platform that seamlessly allows team members to individually chat or create groups to collaborate on specific jobs or projects. At ArboRisk, we utilize the free version but based on your company’s specific needs/wants – there is a paid option available that includes numerous upgrades.

Using these four key programs you can create impressive content, analyze key points of data from your website, and seamlessly communicate with customers and employees without making a large investment.

To learn how to utilize technology better within your company’s marketing efforts, contact ArboRisk today and signup for our Thrive program.

Written by: Amanda Eicher

Increase Your Engagement on Social Media

by | Jul 2, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

Increase YoUr Engagement on Social Media

Have you ever been texting someone and you want to keep talking and asking them questions and they consistently find ways to end the conversation? Many businesses do this exact same thing to potential clients on social media while others still don’t even give people the opportunity to respond.

If you are looking to generate leads and form relationships online, why would you cut off the conversation before it even gets started? I see too many tree services who are active on social media miss opportunities to engage with their followers. To cultivate true online relationships, you must intentionally integrate a strategy to get your followers to interact with you.

Below are a few tips for branching out of your comfort zone and encouraging your followers to engage with you on social media.

Ask Them Questions: Yes, this seems like a no-brainer. But do you know how easy it is to spew content at someone and never bother to ask them how they feel about something? I once unfollowed a shall-not-be-named-brand because they were constantly pushing their own product and not once did they reach out to their followers. #SeeYa Write a post about the fun activity you are doing that night, and ask them to respond with their activity for the night. Post photos of two or three different trees and ask them which tree they would rather have in their backyard. Play “Would you rather” or “Spot the difference” in two photos. All of these options allow your followers to feel included in your business and help them feel more comfortable with you!

Conduct a Contest: One of the easiest ways to get people commenting and engaging with your posts is to hold a contest and provide free items. Everyone loves free stuff. Ask them to identify a tree or piece of equipment you use to win a gift card. Partner up with another business or company and ask your followers to like both of your accounts, your post, and tag three friends on your post to be entered to win a free tree pruning!

Use Trends to Your Advantage: Everyone loves memes, trends, and viral videos. Use these to your advantage! Remember a couple of years ago, there was a dress photo trending online and everyone was arguing about whether it was blue and black or white and gold? Posting a copy of that photo and asking your followers what they think is a great way to get people talking! Everyone loves sharing their opinion, especially on the internet, and viral trends are a great way to show followers that you are engaged in the world and you are willing to give them a platform to share their opinions.

Share photos or @ Them: Include your followers in your posts! One of the best ways to get involved on social media is to engage with others yourself! The more opportunities you have to include other individuals and businesses, the farther reach your posts will have. Also, people are much more likely to comment on posts when they know a person that’s in them!

Share Your Stories: If you don’t share anything personal on your social media, why should your followers? By keeping yourself private, you’re creating distance between you and your followers on an already distant medium! The more personal items you are able to share – why you started your business, what is a weakness of yours, who inspires you – the more likely people are to open up and share with you. And when you’re done sharing, ask them to share their stories! You will find that people are easily persuaded to open up when they feel safe doing so – so give them that opportunity!

The most important thing to remember, is that people follow you for a reason! They want to get to know you and they want to feel like you are in this together. Reaching out to include them in your social media will only strengthen your relationship in the long-run.

Written by: Katie Petersen